Base Notes: Double Charles and the Dream Genie
by TheVineRipeDead
Summary: In Perfumery, there is a top, heart, and base note. The base note appears at the end of the heart note and solidifies the overall scent. It evaporates the slowest and lasts the longest on the skin. This is gonna be a weird one.


The Yard caught him on the run, plastered him spread eagle to an alley wall. He never took anything from anyone he couldn't get himself and his pride barely allowed otherwise. But a man's wife had to eat. She might not be a young pert thing, pregnant with four more dangling by umbilical cords behind her but she deserved all his sacrifice just the same. At least he thought so. She at 60 years and he at 58 there was nothing left but to die slowly, he wouldn't let her go out starving. The shadow of the East End showed just below the waterline of his eyes as The Yard took him in. He didn't yet consider this "it", he refused to swallow resignation. He might as well be dead at that point. However, he held back a boulder rolling rage of self-disappointment and curbed any passive aggressive teenage sneering. He'd play the sad old man for a while.

He hunched his back and sat along the far wall, groaning as he lowered himself. When he landed he gave a long sigh and kept his head down. He intended to gaze at the ground until he fell asleep or they felt sorry for him (maybe he should pick a poor soul out and start talking about his wife?) but a loud usher of growling and whispers lifted his head to the gates. Parading in all their pomp and tassels was two men neatly pressed in white. He should have looked away and remained sorry but it had been a while since he'd seen something so clean. In the late evening the pale elite seemed like ghosts and leading on pigeons was a small spook with a high gaze fallowed by tall young man with wide shoulders and a stare with a purpose. He wasn't so old that he might naturally feel the need to snub the pretentious young but he was just young enough to know when to find someone with _that _kind of swagger irritating. They were _important; _he had no doubt about that. It didn't matter who they were when all that mattered was that they found who they came for (or didn't) and just left. The sooner the better because as the longer Lil Spook and Big Spook circled the icier the stares became. It was past dinner, getting cold, and hardly anyone was going home, he didn't want something to happen that might put The Yard in a sour mood. He reached into his jacket pocket and wrapped his fingers around a small bottle. It was bell shaped, an obscure and even unattractive choice for a bottle, but the neck was slimming and fanned out at the glass stopper. Kneading it in his palm a bit he stopped and thumbed the neck, slowly stoking forwards then back. In his more lousier times she kept him content but the fact that he even had it in his pocket was now making him uneasy.

Lil Spook had came around, passed him with a half-lidded glance then stepped back

_I'm not the one you want. Move along. I am petty old man who steals bread._

A few steps off Big Spook was asking some men to _please_ turn so he could see their faces. Lil Spook turned fully to the old man and cocked a hip.

"What do you have?" He asked through his opium lashes. With a hand on his saber and hair trimmed wildly the boy was the offspring of fashion and privilege. The man clenched his hidden hand. _Ah, this did look strange, didn't it?_

"I've got nothing. Just keeping my hand warm."

"Just one hand…?" Lil Spook's head tilted to the side. He was starting to seem more like an agitated finch.

"I want one free. Just in case."

"So your left hand is your _good_ hand?"

"Is that a crime, officer?" He smiled politely and swallowed a chuckle.

Lil Spook's eyebrows twitched. He didn't like being snarked with. Flicking his thumb the saber rang out of its sheath, a sound that brought Big Spook back over.

Big Spook put a large hand to Lil Spook's slanted shoulder. "Grey, we're done. It's time to go."

Grey pushed his saber back and huffed. "Damn it Phipps. Hold on." With both hands at his hips Grey bent halfway forward right into his face. "Take out what you have."

Just as he meant to make a new remark a pendant he hadn't noticed came into view. Just below the lapel and behind a lazy bow was the Queen's proud silhouette. If he didn't already know how innocent he was he might have felt sorry for being so smart-mouthed, he wasn't but he didn't need any further trouble. A long sigh from deep within his chest (or maybe deeper, in a less tangible place) and pulled out the small bottle. Spider fingers snatched it and held it like a chicken bone.

"What is it?" Grey demanded sharply as he lifted it up to his eyes. He couldn't tell now but in the light the glass was clear and prismatic with a heliotrope of colors.

"It's just perfume. For my wife that's all." He tried to sound reassuring. It really was perfume but it hadn't been for his wife for five years and he never intended it to be. He couldn't ever let such a scent slowly fade on the air daily, ounces out of the bottle disappearing until all that's left is a pretty antique and dreaming solo.

Grey shook the bottle and got a clean hush of liquid. He seemed unconvinced somehow. "Perfume, you say." Grey turned his back to him and the squeak grating of the stopper crept around his shoulder. His head tilted down and there was a sharp cautious inhale. A tremor passed through his shoulders and down his legs. Grey's right heel came half an inch off the ground as his knee weakened in that one breath.

Grey turned his head and shot him an awful, accusing glare.

_I did nothing. It's not a trick. That's just how it is._ The sorry in his face became more genuine as Grey folded open his coat and dropped the bottle into a hidden pocket. He wasn't going to get his perfume back. He signed another long breath and his body relaxed. Charles Grey and Charles Phipps departed The Yard, one looking slightly accomplished and the other looking shaded. He watched his bottle climb on to a carriage and casually ride off. This was the "it" for him and a feeling of real resignation came over. He'd never see or smell her again. He'd have to be content with just his wife from now on. A companion for the soul only. In the earlier hours, when his mind was not all there anymore, he laughed a bit…_ Perhaps it's more like I'm passing the torch in man's race away from reality. _He fell asleep on stone and did not dream.


End file.
